MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Cory Booker

Interview

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MADDOW: President tonight announcing that he has chosen Brett Kavanaugh to  fill the vacancy created on the Supreme Court by the retirement of Justice  Anthony Kennedy. We saw short remarks from the president there and  somewhat longer remarks from Judge Kavanaugh himself.

Judge Kavanaugh, you should know, has been on the D.C. Circuit Court of  Appeals for dozen years. That court has a remarkable record of feeding  judges to the Supreme Court. From the current court, John Roberts, Ruth  Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas, they're all on the Supreme Court now,  they all served on the D.C. Circuit Court before being elevated to the  supremes.

On the D.C. Circuit Court where he sits now, Brett Kavanaugh all these  years has served under the chief judge of that court, that circuit, Merrick  Garland, who, of course, was nominated in the spring of 2016 to fill the  seat left vacant by the death of Antonin Scalia, nominated by President  Barack Obama. Because he was nominated by President Obama, Republicans in  the Senate would not allow a hearing on Judge Garland's nomination. They  cited the election coming later that year.

Close observers will note, there is also an election coming later this year  but nobody knows if Democrats will be able to apply the same standard this  time to wait on hearings on Brett Kavanaugh until after the election the  way the Republicans applied that standard last time.

Democrats will apparently try for that, but they're not in power and we  don't know if they'll be able to pull it off. We're going to be talking  about that over the course of this hour. We also I think shouldn't lose  sight of what a just a -- what a remarkable thing this is that has just  happened tonight. President Trump after less than 18 months in office, not  yet halfway through one term as president, is already making his second  nomination to the court. There's only nine people on the court.

This nomination comes at a time when that choice is fraught and  consequential in ways that have never applied to any other U.S. president  ever. Just consider for a second the snapshot here. The president's first  national security adviser has pled guilty to a felony charge he's going to  appear in person in federal court tomorrow because a federal judge is about  to hold a hearing on the start of his sentencing process.

The president's campaign chairman is now three and a half weeks into  solitary confinement in a federal jail while he awaits the start of two  federal trials on multiple felony counts. The president's longtime  personal lawyer has just secured the legal services of one of President  Clinton's lawyers from his impeachment fight in the `90s while federal  prosecutors mull criminal charges against him and while he is widely  reported to be considering cooperating with those prosecutors than a  potential plea deal.

If the president ends up himself in the crosshairs of the ongoing special  counsel's investigation, any number of the elements of his defense may end  up before the U.S. Supreme Court and therefore potentially before the  nominee he has named tonight. Can the president be subpoenaed to testify  before a grand jury? Can a president be criminally indicted? Can the  president pardon himself? Can the president pardon others if the goal of  those pardons is to weaken the case against himself or his family? Can individual states bring prosecutions against people the president has pardoned if he pardons them for those reasons?

Now, all of those questions are considered more or less to be unsettled as  matters of American law, which means if and when push comes to shove  between the special counsel's investigation and this president, tonight's  announcement of this nominee to fill the seat of retiring Justice Anthony  Kennedy, this nomination will be both critical to the future of law and  policy in this country, but it will also be critical to the president's  personal fate in a way we have never seen before.

And that is not a normal thing you worry about with most Supreme Court  nominations, but that is now a very, very live consideration for the  announced nomination just moments ago of Brett Kavanaugh to the United  States Supreme Court.

Joining us now is U.S. Senator Cory booker who serves on the Judiciary  Committee.

Senator Booker, thank you for being with us tonight. I know this is an  incredibly important evening. Appreciate you having some time for us.

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D), NEW JERSEY: Thank you, Rachel. Thanks for having me  on.

MADDOW: What's your reaction to the president's nomination of Brett  Kavanaugh?

BOOKER: I'm a little sort of stunned at the way this is all played out.  If you look at the entire list of 20 or so people that he had on, the one  person the president could find on that list that would be most assured to  rule in his favor should many of the things you're describing come before  the Supreme Court is this judge. He picked the one guy who has  specifically written that a president in fact should not be the subject of  a criminal investigation, which the president is right now.

So, this seems to be the of all the people the most self-serving person he  could choose in order to protect himself from this criminal investigation.

MADDOW: CNN reported earlier this evening that that factor about Judge  Kavanaugh, his writings on whether a president can be indicted about a  president's potential susceptibility to obstruction of justice charges,  that those writings by Judge Kavanaugh were overtly considered and reviewed  by the White House team that was advising the president on making this  pick. If that's true, if it turns out that the president chose Judge  Kavanaugh for this nomination in part on the basis of what he said about  whether President Trump conceivably could be indicted with that itself be a  factor for the confirmation here, would that be disqualifying in your mind?

BOOKER: Well, first of all, I have no doubt that his president who seems  to be very concerned about himself, I didn't see that as a as a shining  pearl within the picks that he had and the criteria that he looked at. But  I've been saying emphatically before this and now I will be saying with  even stronger voice that we as the United States Senate -- forget  partisanship or what-have-you -- a respect for the Constitution to avoid a  constitutional crisis, we cannot let this confirmation process go forward,  especially now that we have someone that has clearly said that they have a  strong opinion should any of those issues come before the Supreme Court.
We know now that the ideas that you said are not settled law, or whether the president can pardon himself, whether the president can just dispense with the criminal investigation, a lot of these issues could come right 
before that justice that now he is a hundred percent certain we'll have his back.

MADDOW: And, Senator, I know in addition to being a U.S. senator, you are  also a trained lawyer and you have expert opinions on these things, as well  as observing them there are political lens. The way I understand Judge  Kavanaugh is writing on this subject is not just that he said that a  president definitively cannot be indicted and should not be indicted while  in office, but he's also sort of further said that a president shouldn't be  subject to either criminal prosecution or any civil lawsuits while in  office, that a president should essentially be exempt from accountability  on either criminal or civil law while in office simply as a way to ensure  that he's able to focus -- a president is able to focus entirely on the  business of running the country.
That is -- that's interesting in terms of just Kavanaugh's history given  his involvement with the Ken Starr investigation.

BOOKER: Right.

MADDOW: I believe he was the lead author of the of the Ken Starr report.  But this would also seem to have implications for the president's potential  liability not just for the Mueller investigation, but also for any  liability that may attend to the Trump foundation or these Summer Zervos  lawsuit, or -- or the emoluments cases that have been brought. It would  seem to apply to a lot of the legal trouble that the president has been at  the -- that has been sort of brewing around the president over this last  year-and-a-half.

BOOKER: Yes. Well, we know that this president has already in those deep  in legal matters before he even became president and was settling with  millions of dollars beforehand. But now he has a lot of other legal  trouble and the challenges that this president could have caused for  himself, now he's got that insurance policy. He's got this get-out-of- jail-free card if you if you will in the in him sifting through 20-plus  names as well as all the other people he could have considered.

He picked the one that as you said, it's not just that he said a president  couldn't be indicted, it's not just that he said that a president couldn't  be held accountable for his actions, this is somebody that goes as far as  to say that even an investigation, even him being in the midst of an at  larger investigation, that this could distract the president from his other  urgent work. And yet you're right, Rachel, it's a choice piece of irony  that this was a person that is a very much a political actor before he was  a jurist, that was a part of the Starr investigation himself.

So, I'm deeply troubled by this. Before you even get to the issues that  concern me as an American citizen, that this is a person that's going to  roll back so many of the freedoms and liberties that Americans have a  gained from themselves over the fifty years, whether it's a woman's right  to make her own medical decision, whether it's voting rights, whether it's  right for workers to organize, whether it's the right for individuals to  have the rights of citizenship like voting rights -- there's so many things  here that should be objectionable to, again, people on both sides of the aisle, worrying about the corporate ascendancy in this country that we 
already saw with the Citizens United decision, that's so muted the voices of ordinary Americans and ascended the billions of dollars now that we see dark money pouring into our campaigns.

But this trend now with the shifting imbalance of the court, that should be  enough to cause outrage and to give me a sense of conviction. But I am  really stunned having watched what's happened over the last six months with  a legitimate investigation of a nation that has been attacked by the  Russians of which as you said, there has been a seventy plus charges,  twenty plus individuals and companies that have been subject to those  charges, five guilty pleas, one sentence, people all swirling around this  president, we have a bipartisan group within the intelligence committee on  the Senate side at least saying that the Russians indeed did attack us --  all of this is going on right now, and it's almost like I'm watching a bad  movie that now a president of the United States has got sort of indemnified  himself by picking the one person he knew would have his back and one  person that would give him shield from anything that might come up at him,  even though we now see that numerous people around his campaign and his  administration are under investigation right now.

MADDOW: Senator Cory Booker of the great state of New Jersey, thank you  for being with us tonight, sir, on this big important night. Thanks for  being here.

BOOKER: Thank you for having me, Rachel.

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